Sometime this week I'm hoping to scrounge up the $25 I need to get a permit for the local state park and do some nature walking myself. I never really considered myself an outdoorsy girl before I went away, but Scotland turned me into one (don't know how you can spend any measure of time there and not be converted, really)! Now that the spring has finally returned in earnest, I'm itching to get out there!

ha ha, I tried that when I was in Scotland, but found myself, like Keats, having difficulty conveying my reactions.

I had a little Moleskine diary that I carried around with me on my travels. I vowed to write in it extensively, but was so absorbed in just looking that I hardly ever brought myself down to actually write. However, I did make a baffled attempt when I visited the Lake District for the first time (after I'd seen Grasmere and Dove Cottage where Wordsworth wrote some of his greatest works, also the day I unexpectedly--fatedly, almost--saw Keats's life mask at the Wordsworth museum):

"I am purely happy. I am in the presence of poetry today, so real that it is tactile, and that alone makes this the most beautiful place in the world. I feel as though I am living in a dream, the gray haze that obscures the distant mountains hanging like the fog that hides every dream from our consciousness of a perfect memory. I fear forgetting this feeling. It is one that pictures and sounds and words cannot replace. Only the pures and most unspoiled of memories. . . which is why today must remain a perfect day, even as the sun begins to be lost behind the graying sky. . ."

". . . The landscape seems to change. . . the colors fade into one another sometimes so that two mountains turn into one, or a new one is born from another. . ."

So there are my vain attempts at capturing a glorious and immortal experience on paper.

On the lighter side of things, though, I wrote this one when I visited Stirling:

"Dear William Wallace,

Why, oh why did you have to win your famous battle so conveniently near a craig rising 300 feet from the surrounding landscape? Didn't you realize the convenience of constructing your monument upon said craig, overlooking the city of Stirling and the countryside for miles around? There for all to see, yes, but also a torture climb to get to.

Saturn wrote:Now THAT'S scenery - ah...Scotland - I left my heart there many moons ago and can never return

If it makes you feel any better, the pic is from the English Lake District, which, although looking a heck of a lot like Scotland, isn't actually Scotland. So, if you're looking for a passable substitute (well, decidedly that. . . a beautiful place in its own right) for Scotland, you could always go there

Gorgeous pictures, Credo and Saturn. I, too, would love to visit Scotland--I'll be in London again in January--close, but no cigar. While there this time I hope to visit the Seven Sisters cliffs--I'll snap as many pics as my camera will allow.

Maybe Keats will steal up behind me while I'm "struck dumb" by the beauty of the English coast and quietly say, "beautiful, isn't it?"

Wha? Oh, sorry--lost myself there...

"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the Truth of Imagination."

These aren't necessarily places where I walk, but they give a good idea of what the area around where I live looks like. The pics that show a river were taken along the Columbia Reach--the only natural stretch of the river that remains. The sunset pic was taken just outside our house--the desert sunsets around here are spectacular. The greenest pic was taken by my brother of the Palouse region, about an hour and a half's drive from where I live, where we grow most of our wheat in Washington.

It's always baffling to me to think about the variety of climates and landscapes where people make their homes. I've lived in the central plains my whole life, where the landscape is very flat and fertile, about as far away from any large body of water (salt water, I should say. . . the Great Lakes don't count) as you can get probably anywhere in the world, and covered in ice and snow for half the year. And then I went to Scotland-- the "flat" part of Scotland with its rolling hills--and lived in a coastal town on the North Sea with a gorgeous beach and high cliffs.

Then there are people like you, Malia, that live in the desert; or a good friend of mine who grew up here and moved to Arizona, where bugs are massive and heat is regularly in the 100s. The fact that she has no grass in her yard blows my mind

And then there are the people I saw in Norway living in remote villages, hidden in green valleys between imposing mountains, where the only access is by ferry, and snow depth is measured not in inches or feet, but in meters.

Then there are the people living in sub-tropical Mexican villages, dripping humid, that seem to sit on top of the world because the clouds form beneath them. Where giant ferns look like they could swallow you up if you get too close to them.

It's always baffling to me to think about the variety of climates and landscapes where people make their homes. I've lived in the central plains my whole life, where the landscape is very flat and fertile, about as far away from any large body of water (salt water, I should say. . . the Great Lakes don't count) as you can get probably anywhere in the world, and covered in ice and snow for half the year. And then I went to Scotland-- the "flat" part of Scotland with its rolling hills--and lived in a coastal town on the North Sea with a gorgeous beach and high cliffs.

Then there are people like you, Malia, that live in the desert; or a good friend of mine who grew up here and moved to Arizona, where bugs are massive and heat is regularly in the 100s. The fact that she has no grass in her yard blows my mind

And then there are the people I saw in Norway living in remote villages, hidden in green valleys between imposing mountains, where the only access is by ferry, and snow depth is measured not in inches or feet, but in meters.

Then there are the people living in sub-tropical Mexican villages, dripping humid, that seem to sit on top of the world because the clouds form beneath them. Where giant ferns look like they could swallow you up if you get too close to them.

What a glorious planet we live on

Dripping humid? Well, welcome to the bayou city of Houston!! I will try to get some pics of the glorious Gulf Coast on here--I wrote a poem about Galveston--it's a fantastic place--like New Orleans, but Texas style. I also wrote a poem about New Orleans--my favorite, fair crescent city...what I can't imagine is living where it is undoubtedly, unbelievably COLD in the winter--Washington State, Wisconsin, Michigan--brrrrrrrrrr--I think it got down to 30 degrees once this winter here--and the schools closed because, well, you know *say in Texas accent* it's too damn cold to learn!

"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the Truth of Imagination."

dks wrote:I will try to get some pics of the glorious Gulf Coast on here--I wrote a poem about Galveston--it's a fantastic place--like New Orleans, but Texas style. I also wrote a poem about New Orleans--my favorite, fair crescent city...what I can't imagine is living where it is undoubtedly, unbelievably COLD in the winter--Washington State, Wisconsin, Michigan--brrrrrrrrrr--I think it got down to 30 degrees once this winter here--and the schools closed because, well, you know *say in Texas accent* it's too damn cold to learn!

For our domestic tour last January/February, we ended up down in Galveston and actually had a free day, which we rarely ever get during our hectic tour schedule. We were so excited to be down on the Gulf coast in Texas because, well, coming from the frigid North, it had to be practically tropical, right?

WRONG! The day we were there was cloudy, drizzling, and miserable. Good thing we didn't find out that same day that it was actually warmer up in Minnesota that day than it was in Galveston!

I insisted on going wading anyway, because it's just wrong to walk on a beach with your shoes on. After awhile, I couldn't even feel the cold anymore!

But seriously, 30 degrees is nothing up here. What most people don't realize, though, is that it actually gets pretty hot and humid in the summer as well. We have a little of everything, really: windchills -30 or lower at the coldest in the winter, heat indexes in the 100s in the summer on occassion. You've gotta be made of strong stuff to live up here